Talk:Racism in the United States/Archive 8

RfC concerning placement of racism against Jewish Americans

 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Where should the section of this article about racism against Jewish Americans be placed? Please limit your choice to one of the following: A under the primary section heading "Middle Eastern and South Asian Americans", B under its own primary section heading, or C somewhere else? (If you choose C, please elaborate.) — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 03:20, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Survey

 * B — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 03:20, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
 * B, obviously. While most Jewish people have Middle Eastern ancestry if you go back far enough, the vast majority is the US are Ashkenazi Jews and therefore more proximately of European descent; they are not perceived as being Middle Eastern, on the whole, in American culture.  This is particularly important when discussing racism, because they tend to face a different set of prejudices and different forms of racism as a result, which makes it worth putting them in a separate section. --Aquillion (talk) 06:29, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
 * B. Many Jews do not have a middle-eastern ancestry. We have African American Jews. And European descended Jews with nary a whiff of Asia. Beyond this technicality, the causes of racism against Jews are quite distinct and separate (stemming largely from European blood libels and early Christian-Jewish spats, and in recent years from Nazi spin-offs and possibly the Israeli/Arab conflict (though it is debated what causes what in this regard)).Icewhiz (talk) 08:19, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
 * B apart from the arguments made above and below about the difficulty of classifying Jewish people as part of any geographical group, anti-semitism is commonly treated as a distinct form of prejudice, regardless of the recent (or historically distant) origin of the victim. Pincrete (talk) 09:52, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
 * B Anti-semitism is it's own nasty little beast. It deserves it's own section.--Adamfinmo (talk) 10:33, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
 * A Ethnic Jews are a Middle Eastern people. Much of the bigotry/racism against Jews in the US traced back to the bigotry/racism against Jews in Europe, which was directed at them precisely because they were not Europeans, but a Middle Eastern people living in diaspora among Europeans, and refusing to fully assimilate. The bogus claim that Ashkenazi Jews are "primarily European" is utter nonsense, not backed by historical sources or by DNA studies. PA Math Prof (talk) 15:39, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
 * B My own present understanding is that the Jewish people have undergone such a process of "natural selection" over the centuries that they are generally more intelligent than others. It is for their very success that they may be resented; if they were not so prominent they would blend in better with the other ethnic groups: just my theory. But I think they deserve a separate section, identifying them as Mid-Easterners goes back almost 2000 years and follows the Zionist argument. Wikipedia is not the place to teach a religious perspective but to reflect the present reality in the public mind. I tend to agree with Yehuda Bauer's analysis (in the article) of the present situation. Jzsj (talk) 08:13, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * B Antisemitism was a term invented by Jew haters to make Jew hatred into a racial instead of religious hate to make it more scientific instead of religious in the post industrial revolution era when religious Jew hatred went out of style as religion itself did so Jew haters needed a new way to keep the hatred alive so they turned to racial antisemitism so antisemitism is Jew hatred by another name and has nothing to do with other Semitic races.עם ישראל חי (talk) 15:22, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * B - Jewishness as a self-identity is something distinct from other traditional ethnic groupings and, as stated above, one can be Jewish and also multiple things (African-American Jews, Jews of Northern Europe, et cetera). CoffeeWithMarkets (talk) 16:59, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * C - actually, like Islamophobia that is a discrimination, xenophobia, and intolerance based on Religion, not on Race. So this belongs in Religious discrimination in the United States and/or Religious persecution.  See the OMB categories of races and ethnicities here.  The aricle also shows geographic categories too though, so maybe the article overall just needs to be merged to Discrimination in the United States. Cheers  Markbassett (talk) 05:45, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * As Jews are a Ethnoreligious group - this assertion is complex.Icewhiz (talk) 08:41, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Remove section entirely. I have never heard of antisemitism being described as a type of racism. Without explicit sourcing supporting that, which I do not see, the entire section should be removed outright. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 18:02, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Dr. Fleischman I think there may be some slim chance you could find sourcing over at Racial antisemitism. We have an entire article dedicated to the topic :) Alsee (talk) 07:02, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, interesting article. However it doesn't say racial antisemitism is a form of racism, and even if it did, then the antisemitism here would have to be changed to be about racial antisemitism rather than about antisemitism more broadly. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 19:34, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
 * No lack of sources at Nazism and race. Jews, practicing or not - even if they had converted, were murdered in the Holocaust on the basis of race and the alleged racial danger they posed. Mixed blood Mischling faced various restrictions. I believe this is at least one significant example of racism in this context.Icewhiz (talk) 21:20, 6 March 2018 (UTC) and for a modern US issue relating to "Jewish genes", see - Neo-Nazis are taking genetic tests and are deeply upset by the results, Independent, August 2017.Icewhiz (talk) 08:01, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * You're mistaken, there's a total lack of sources. I read through Nazism and race and didn't see anything calling antisemitism a form of racism, nor anything expressly referring to racism at all. Nor did the source you gave. But that's beside the point. This shouldn't really be a dispute. If we're going to say that antisemitism is a type of racism in this article, then we to provide reliable sources that say antisemitism is a type of racism in this article. That's Wikipedia 101. If the sources exist, they should be added, or else the material must be removed. In any case, this has gone well beyond responding to my !vote, so if anyone wants to keep discussing let's do it elsewhere. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 00:26, 8 March 2018 (UTC)


 * B - This is an encyclopedia article. The Jewish topic is distinct enough, significant enough, and expansive enough, to warrant its own top level section. Squabbles over other details are irrelevant. Alsee (talk) 06:57, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
 * B - Jewish American identity has always been fraught with internal contradictions and, as the saying goes, get two Jews in a room and you will find three opinions, or more. This is especially true when talking about Jewish ethnicity and its relationship to other groups in the US -- we have seen plenty of this on Wikipedia especially on the uhh, racial identity question... Some of the commentary (on both sides) on this page about the views of others has been the opposite of productive. At the same time, antisemitism has always had a life of its own that is typically studied separately from that of other groups. Not subsuming Jewish American experiences under any heading except "Jewish" is the best way to observe NPOV here and avoid pushing one view or another about Jewish identity on the reader. --Calthinus (talk) 23:51, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
 * B—Antisemitism is significant in the United States and the geographic issue is unsettled. A separate section seems like an easy solution.--Carwil (talk) 01:02, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * B, warrants its own section.--Z oupan 11:43, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * B "anti-semitism" is a form of racism. People engaging in racism and hate make no such academic distinctions. Elmmapleoakpine (talk) 17:36, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

 * While the Jewish people may have ancient ancestry in the Middle East, about 90% of American Jews are of European (Ashkenazi) descent. Nobody in her or his right mind categorizes American Jews as Middle Easterners. Finally, Jews are not the victims of racism (antisemitism) because of where their nation may have originated. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 03:20, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Firstly, Malik: your argument that Jews are not victims of racism based on the Middle Eastern origin of the Jewish people is spurious at best. It could just as easily be said that black Americans aren't victims of racism based explicitly on their origins in Africa, nor are Arab or Indian Americans explicitly hated because of where they came from: racism is based on ingrained stereotypes related to differences in culture, ideology, appearance etc. In the case of Jews, antisemitism was already heavily ingrained for centuries, if not millennia, and certainly was by the time Jews began appearing in Europe in large numbers; and America also often shows prejudice to immigrants, which Jews certainly were. In fact, it coincided directly with the discrimination faced by other West Asian groups in America, which incorporated both anti-immigrant sentiment AND explicitly ethnic/racial prejudices. Jews were, and still are, racialized as Middle Eastern/Oriental. Any modern anti-Jewish caricature, replete with exaggerated Semitic features, will tell you that.

Second, "nobody in her or his right mind categorizes American Jews as Middle Easterners"? Not only is this incorrect, but also aggressive and derogatory, and comes off as highly POV. Immigration documents for Ashkenazi Jews who immigrated before 1950 show racial classifications like "Hebrew" and "mulatto", and further historical American writings describe Jews as "Mongoloid", "Semite", "Syrian", "Oriental", "West Asian", etc. The relationship of Jews to whiteness is ambiguous now (in large part due to events like the 1909 Shishim case and the efforts by MENA Americans to avoid denaturalization or other discriminations based on ethnicity in past eras), but the notion that Ashkenazi Jews cannot and have not ever been categorized as Middle Easterners is absurd. Moreover: "of European descent"? To some extent, sure, due to centuries of gradual rape and intermingling in Europe, but a diaspora is never said to be "descended" from the majority ethnicity of its host country. And Jews are referred to as "diaspora Jews", both by themselves and by others, in every country except Israel, precisely because that is where Jews originate. To some extent there is ethnic admixture in diaspora populations (of any people), but such a standard is not applied to, for example, African-Americans — you would not say they are "of European descent" or "of American descent", even those who have significant European admixture in their family trees (again, often due to historical rape and other causes). White people have also lived in North America for centuries, as diaspora and settlers: but it would be fallacious to say they are therefore "of American descent", in a racial/ethnic sense — they remain ethnically/racially (predominantly) European-descended. The Jewish diaspora in Europe remained (and remains to this day) a diaspora population: and in the case of Ashkenazi Jews, a forced/coerced diaspora, not in Europe of their own volition but as a result of violent displacement. Ashkenazim, like all Jewish diaspora populations, continue to regard themselves as the diaspora of a Middle Eastern nation, hence the continued application of terms like "diaspora Jew" to non-Israeli Jews. Many American Jews, both Ashkenazi and otherwise, have never accepted a "European" identity for themselves; and many American Jews are increasingly rejecting identification as white, in part because of its growing association with European Americans exclusively, as opposed to decades past where it included Middle Eastern and North African Americans as well. Jews living outside of Israel have always been, both currently and historically, seen as originating in Israel. The idea that Jews are NOT a Middle Eastern diaspora is a relatively recent one, and is at least partially driven by political antisemitism. I think you may be conflating the nebulous American construct of "white" with "European"; these are not synonyms, and the relationship of Jews to whiteness in America is indeed ambiguous (as it is for other MENA peoples), but that is not adequate justification for extrapolating that American Jews are European, or anything other than Semitic Middle Eastern diaspora.

Third, I can't help but notice that you A.) started a RFC thread instead of engaging with my thread of near-identical topic, B.) left out Romani from this survey, singling out Jews in a way that comes across as antisemitic, and C.) these actions could be interpreted as canvassing, seeing as you did not interact with my thread on this topic, with me, or with the people who were supporting my reasoning on said thread, but instead went around all of us and made a survey as if such conversations had never taken place. Polling is not a substitute for discourse. WP:NOTADEMOCRACY Batanat (talk) 07:03, 26 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Malik, et al., this is becoming more and more absurd. If Ashkenazi Jews are “proximately European”, then surely all African-Americans are more proximately European or Amerindian? Since apparently the majority race of whichever area a Diaspora people happens to find themselves (often forcibly) somehow carries over and applies to the Diaspora people? Or perhaps white Australians or Americans are Aboriginal, by the same logic. Your arguments are nonsensical, and the fact none of you engage with any discourse here is increasingly suggestive of WP:BIAS and deliberate canvassing. Polls are not a substitute for discourse, and Wikipedia is not a democracy.

Singling out Jews is also, I reiterate, quite peculiar and unsettling. And why are you talking about African-American and white European converts with no Middle Eastern ancestry — A.) converts are rare, and B.) this is a discussion about ETHNIC JEWS and racism against ETHNIC JEWS, making all comments not pertaining to ETHNIC JEWS 100% irrelevant. There are no ethnic Jews lacking Middle Eastern descent. There are no “fully European” ethnic Jews.

And saying that American Jews aren’t read as Middle Eastern is equally ridiculous: look at literally any antisemitic caricature you want, and virtually all of them play in some way on exaggerated Semitic physical features. And besides which: even if absolutely nobody in America thought of Jews as Middle Eastern, Jews would still be Middle Eastern. Perception plays no part in where Jews should be placed in a list of racial categories. As I’ve said many times: of course the ambiguous relationship between Jews and whiteness in the US should be discussed, just as it is for other Diaspora MENA groups in America, but to exclude Jews from the MENA/MESA category based on blatantly erroneous and subjective preconceptions is simply wrong. Ethnic Jews are a Middle Eastern ethnic group, period; and no amount of irrelevancies or dodgy, subjective claims will ever alter that fact.

I am increasingly suspicious that this RFC is merely a way of gatekeeping an article for POV-driven (i.e., antisemitic) reasons. First, Malik, you tell me to build consensus. I did. Then, once you’d seen that I’d done that, you — rather than engaging in any way with my thread — made this separate RFC thread singling out Jews, it would appear, in order to gather support for your own view, as an attempt to negate the consensus I built (as per your suggestion). I call WP:BIAS. This RFC is not an honest, objective assessment of the topic, it’s a cowardly sham meant, it would appear, to assert the (bogus) claim that Jews aren’t a Middle Eastern ethnic group. No one here in favor of B has given any cogent or relevant arguments; half of these pro-B arguments are outright fallacious or half-true at best. I call shenanigans here. This RFC is just a poll being used as a substitute for discussion, in order to ideologically gatekeep the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Batanat (talk • contribs) 11:37, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Ignoring the ethnic component of Jewish identity is quite deceitful. Those who make Antisemitic statements or commit Antisemitic acts pretty much never stop to ask whether the victim is an observant Jew, religiously. The prejudice is based on the perception of the Jewish people as "other", specifically Middle Eastern, if you look at the common caricatures, which exaggerate the Middle Eastern features of the Jews portrayed in Antisemitic cartoons, it is quite clear that Jews are being singled out based on their Middle Eastern appearance. (Which is ironic, when some of those same cartoons are drawn to try to point to Jews as foreigners in the Middle East, all while emphasizing the Middle Eastern features).

And the notion of singling out Jews, placing them in a separate category, and denying them the right to identify themselves in the way that history and science support, is grossly Antisemitic in and of itself. PA Math Prof (talk) 15:47, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Jzsj - Again, you cannot substitute discourse for polling, and that is precisely what you’re doing by answering the survey but ignoring the actual topical discussion. You have not responded in any meaningful way (or at all, really) to the arguments I presented here. Instead, you sidestepped each one and presented your own view as if it had not already been challenged. That is textbook WP:BIAS.

“The Zionist argument” — This right here is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Your remarks handwaving Jewish ethnic identity and history as "Zionist argument", and suggesting Jews face “resentment” because they have been “naturally selected” to be smart and successful are heinous and manifestly antisemitic.

I won’t beat the same dead horse at length, but to briefly reiterate: yes, Jews are a Middle Eastern ethnic group, and always have been. To say so is not a “Zionist perspective or filtering reality through a religious lens, but simply stating well-documented, well-supported fact. That you would reduce it to politics or religion suggests that you are not knowledgeable enough in this area to make an informed and cogent contribution here. Batanat (talk) 15:06, 27 February 2018 (UTC)


 * CoffeeWithMarkets and עם ישראל חי: you are both, like the others here, failing to engage with anything I’ve said, and instead using polling as a substitute for discourse. That is against Wikipedia policy. עם ישראל חי your comments are, to be frank, ridiculous. Antisemitism as a term was coined as a replacement for the informal term Jüdenhaß (“Jew-hate”), it was not “invented by Jew haters to make Jew hatred into a racial instead of religious hate” — anti-Jewish sentiment has been partly or wholly ethnic/racial for most of history; hatred of Judaism was more prominent in past eras, yes, but Judaism is simply the “-ism” of the Jewish PEOPLE. One could compare it to the religious traditions of Native American tribes: the West called them “savages” and “heathens” in part based on their non-Christian religious beliefs and spiritual practices, but it would be foolish to say that the West hated only the religions and not the ethnic groups who practiced them — the same applies to Jews historically. And even beyond that, Jews have always been racialized as “Oriental” or “West Asian”, going all the way back to the Romans; Jews in Europe were othered as “swarthy” and “Asiatic”, expressly racializing them, and that was often an integral part of antisemitism even in the Middle Ages. So to assert that antisemitism was a purely religious prejudice and not racial/ethnic is patently and demonstrably false.

CoffeeWithMarkets, you’re making the same bogus argument as Icewhiz: conflating Jewish converts with ethnic Jews. Since the topic of discussion in the article is racial/ethnic prejudice against Jews, mentioning members of the Jewish tribe who are not ethnically/racially Jewish is utterly irrelevant. Yes, Jewish identity is complicated, but your comments implied that it is purely or primarily religion, which is incorrect.

I once again call WP:BIAS, and remind everyone here to please stop bypassing discourse and using polling instead. And I would also reiterate, as I did for Jzsj, that the assertions made by CoffeeWithMarkets and עם ישראל חי clearly demonstrate their ignorance of this subject, and hence their incompetence to make informed and cogent contributions here. Batanat (talk) 00:25, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I question whether you are viewing this discussion from a superior vantage point, and have responded to your dismissal of me at the end of the previous section. Jzsj (talk) 21:17, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

For those now claiming that antisemitism is purely religion-based and not a form of racism: I reiterate, anyone making such a claim does not have adequate knowledge of this subject to make cogent or informed contributions here. And I also reiterate: polling is not a substitute for discourse, WP:BIAS, WP:NOTADEMOCRACY, etc., etc. Batanat (talk) 23:15, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I am not saying antisemitism is purely religion-based, but if we're going to say it's a form of racism (which it might or might not be), then we need reliable sourcing for that. Your personal knowledge is not a substitute for verifiability. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 19:41, 5 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Dr. Fleischman, it’s literally sourced already on the main article for Antisemitism. It’s easily verifiable that antisemitism is a form of racism. Frankly, it’s ludicrous to suggest that it isn’t. Batanat (talk) 23:51, 9 March 2018 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

adding a new source and section
https://www.csce.gov/international-impact/events/racism-21st-century-understanding-global-challenges-and-implementing

I think that this source would be great to use in adding a section to this article!Taylormartucci (talk) 13:53, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Focus on contemporary issues
This page look to much like history to me. Not that is not important, but the lack of contemporary problem make me feel it's an problem from the past. Anyone share this impression? Gagarine (talk) 21:25, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Weirdness
In 2005, as 4,000 people in Detroit paid their final respects to civil rights hero Rosa Parks during the four hours of her funeral ceremony on November 2, FoxNews devoted 23 minutes of air time to live coverage, there was 108 minutes of coverage on CNN and 100 on MSNBC.

Alright, uh...how is this relevant to the article, the news coverage of various networks? Why is it neccesary to say FoxNews had only '23 minutes of air time'? Also, isn't 'hero' a non-neutral term? Who is a hero or not is relative, and not a set fact. Should anyone be refered to as a 'hero' on Wikipedia? Shouldn't it say, "Rosa Parks, who is considered to be a hero in the civil rights movement by many..." or something similar?

Here are some links for citations.
The stuff's out there, I just don't have time to go through the tutorial on how to insert citations right now. On the peaking of lynchings in the "nadir":

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aap/timelin2.html

On the foundation of the NAACP: (I mean, come on guys, it's on the NAACP website under "How the NAACP Began"):

http://www.naacp.org/about/history/howbegan/  (dead link)

On Jim Crow:

http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/

On lynchings and lynching photography:

http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/

Als, H., Lewis, J., Litwack, L. F. (Authors), Allen, J. (Ed.): Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. (2000) Twin Palms Publishers, Santa Fe.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/classics2/carnival/

Article needs different title
How about "Discrimination against African Americans ("racial" discrimination)"?

As it is, it implies that there is such a thing as a black race. I thought that that had been rejected by most reputable scholars of all skin colors. Please see Race (human categorization). deisenbe (talk) 22:31, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

That would work excellent except for the fact that large sections of the article are about other ethnic groups. Did you even read it?-Rainbowofpeace (talk) 22:59, 19 May 2018 (UTC)


 * I apologize, I got it confused with the article on Racial segregation, which I’m also working on. deisenbe (talk) 11:47, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

"some Arab Americans from places other than the Levant feel they are not white and are not perceived as white by American society.["
I've changed this to reflect the source, but the fact that some adolescents don't identify as white is really minor compared to the number of adults. This source mentions a couple of studies in which large numbers of adults don't identify as white, and this article is about a failed attempt to have a separate census classification. I don't have time to rewrite this. Doug Weller talk 15:08, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Commons files used on this page have been nominated for deletion
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Numerus clausus
Shouldn't numerus clausus be quoted here?Xx236 (talk) 11:41, 1 July 2019 (UTC)